A patient with a dog phobia is placed in a room with several unrestrained dogs and required to remain there until his anxiety subsides completely, without any prior relaxation training or graded hierarchy. Compared with systematic desensitisation, this technique differs primarily because it:

• A Uses immediate intense exposure without a hierarchy, allowing extinction through prolonged contact ✓
• B Uses reciprocal inhibition through paired muscle relaxation
• C Uses imagined scenes rather than real-life exposure
• D Uses pharmacological sedation during the exposure session

Explanation

Flooding exposes the patient immediately to the most feared stimulus at full intensity, without a graded hierarchy or relaxation, and keeps exposure maintained until anxiety extinguishes. Systematic desensitisation, by contrast, proceeds stepwise up a hierarchy while pairing each step with relaxation based on reciprocal inhibition. Option B describes systematic desensitisation itself, making it the principal distractor; options C and D do not define flooding either.

Reference: Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry, 12th ed.

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